Gonk:

2 Oppo 981HD DVD players arrived today, and the difference is amazing!! I am awaiting a 50' HDMI cable for the media room player, but I connected the other player to a 3 year old 1080i 42" Panasonic plasma monitor and the upconversion (versus the Denon DVD players 480i output)is impressive. To make this work I ordered an HDMI switching unit from Monoprice, was much less inexpensive than the other sources, and the build quality is very solid.

Thanks again for your help here. I will provide another update once my media room unit is functional.

Best,

gb